Have you ever purchased a digital product, only to discover that you
couldn't use it as you wish? Maybe you bought your favorite musician's
new album and realized that you couldn't make a copy to share with
your friend, or you downloaded an ebook that you couldn't read on both
your tablet and your desktop computer. Those are both forms of
Digital Restrictions
Management
(DRM) -- technological handcuffs that control how you can use digital
media.

The Defective by Design (DbD) campaign has been fighting to eliminate
DRM entirely, and today we signed on to a proposal to the U.S. Federal
Trade Commission (FTC) that would help users avoid buying
DRM-encumbered products. Our colleagues at the Electronic Frontier
Foundation have submitted a plan to the FTC for a DRM labeling
requirement
for all digital media, and the Free Software Foundation (FSF), who
runs the DbD campaign, offered its support along with 17 other
nonprofits and publishers. There are many places to buy digital
books, music, and movies online, but in the US, these items are not
described in a consistent way, making it difficult for a person to
know whether the ebook they want to read is locked up with DRM. If you
want to use digital media without having it use you, a clear,
easy-to-find DRM label will help you avoid products with DRM -- and
those who sell digital media may recognize that you prefer to avoid
DRM and start removing it from their products.

There's precedent for a DRM labeling requirement: the Organisation for
Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), an intergovernmental
economic organization with thirty-five member countries (including the
US), recommends easy access to DRM information, as does the European
Union's Consumer Rights Directive. If anything, the FTC is behind the
times when it comes to DRM labeling. Labeling is an effective tool
for users: the FSF has several labeling campaigns that inform people
about DRM and help them choose software freedom. In 2006, DbD launched
an effort to tag items containing DRM on
Amazon.com. Amazon
eliminated the tagging feature, but you can still write reviews that
alert others to the presence of DRM.

Defective by Design also provides a way for businesses and individuals
to voluntarily label their products
DRM-free. And the Free
Software Foundation's own Respects Your Freedom (RYF) certification
program
offers hardware sellers a label that signifies our endorsement of
their hardware as respectful of your freedom and privacy. An RYF label
indicates that not only does the hardware not use DRM, but all
software on the device is fully under the user's control.

RYF certification, endorsement, and labeling has helped boost sales of
freedom-respecting hardware, because it raises awareness of software
freedom issues and allows people to act on their values in their
purchases. The DRM-Free product label does the same. We expect that a
DRM labeling requirement will similarly boost the sales of DRM-free
digital media.

It's hard to build a movement against DRM when retailers actively
conceal whether products are infected with it. People who don't want
DRM mucking up their media have to do extra research to know what to
buy and what to avoid. This proposal to the FTC would go a long way
toward helping us concentrate and mobilize opposition. But this is
also a reminder that we don't have to wait for governments anywhere to
make providing accurate product information mandatory -- we can take
action now to highlight products that are Defective by Design!